You have to want the induction of marriage
with its lot of glue along with its half-death,
helmets with initials carved in,
persnickety daughters demanding liberal nods,
half-baked urbaniacs living on Main and Third
disposed to codependent students who jam
the worn-through study to ask
how to proportion language beyond light,
mortgages dangling your bit
of check balance out to dry.

You have to want to cry in Kansas,
that dark theater, and worry with the pills
your health would find:
descending a staircase to a spouse with wild hair
and drops of spit on his/her hairshirt, the garden
pecked over by birds. You’d have to
want it because there’s another place where
it’s air-conditioned and dark and upholstered
and slattern and lush and devout, a place
of libidinous blackout. You’d have to really want it.

To learn more about Carmen Giménez Smith, you can visit her website by clicking here, or see her page on the Poetry Foundation’s website by clicking here.